I usually feel warm fuzzies about Jesus, but I will say that in church

[GreenPartyVoter]

this weekend I wa feeling like.. well He was more judgemental than I thought, or at least chose to remember. That or He wasn't and someone else wrote him up as being so?

We read Matthew chapter 5 and I found conflicting answers there: "called least in he kingdom of heaven" and "in danger of the fires of Hell".

So from this chapter I saw a case for universalism (a sinner who was called the least of these in heaven) and sinners who were in danger of the fires of Hell or of not being given entrance to Heaven.

Now, me I am a pluralistic universalist and don't believe in Hell because it makes no sense for a loving supreme parent to set fire to their kid, and I tend to pay more attention to what is attribute to Jesus than to others in the Bible, but man He is harsh in some of that chapter. :) (Of course I don't believe in the idea that Jesus says everything is ok to do. Of course not, because He doesn't want people to be hurt, therefore we have to base our actions on trying not to hurt people.)

Anyway, just wanted your thoughts on this? :)

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Anyone?

[Maat]

2. I'm a Religious Scientist and we don't believe in Hell either.

So, I know what you mean.

We believe that God (or Spirit) is an energy within (and without), always available to help - all each one of has to do is ask.

If fact if we don't ask, we manifest the negative instead of the positive - so abundance is ours - when we visualize and ask.

I think that a personality like Cheney's manifests negative things because he doesn't have much love and empathy within.

I also visit my favorite Unitarian-Universalist church; both of my churches are of the universalist-type, because they believe that all will transition successfully (no Hell)(maybe you learn a lesson in your next incarnation I believe - but no Hell).

[realisticphish]

3. I'm a Lutheran

and I don't believe in hell. Purgatory (or something like it) perhaps, but not hell

[regnaD kciN]

4. Maybe I'm more cynical about the world...

Now, me I am a pluralistic universalist and don't believe in Hell because it makes no sense for a loving supreme parent to set fire to their kid

...and, while I'll grant you that point, it does (unfortunately) make perfect sense to me that someone should so alienate themselves from God and turn their back on what is good and true that, when they get to the new world after this one, even "heaven" would seem like "hell" to them. I think that's a far more likely view of the age to come than the notion that God would send people who wanted to be with him to everlasting fire. As someone once said "the door to hell is locked from the inside." (Whether one might be able to "turn again" and unlock that door is something I can't judge, but I suspect it would be more dependent on whether our own personalities could change after one's earthly life ends, or simply remain "stuck" where they are, rather than on anything God might do.)

So, in those readings, I don't see Jesus's warnings as "do this or else God will cast you into hellfire" so much as "if you persist in negative patterns of behavior, it's going to warp your personality so much that you will find God, in the next life as well as this one, to be someone you can't stand...and, in the next life, you'll be stuck with him, like it or not!"

[elshiva]

5. I agree. I think Jesus was basically saying

you will burn yourself with your destructive behavior.

[RevCheesehead]

6. Now that makes sense.

I've always read Jesus as advocating personal responsibility, rather than promoting the right-wing agenda (of sending OTHER people to hell). Fundy hell-burning kind of flies in the face of "take the log out of your own eye, and leave that little speck alone."

[elshiva]

7. Personal responsibility is important religious teaching.

Revenge is not.

[GreenPartyVoter]

8. However it is easy to see how the revenge piece was added to the Bible.

Oppression and a lack of hope of getting out from under whatever or whoever is holding you down tends to lead to a desire of seeing the other guy "get his". No wonder there is an undercurrent of "the other guy getting his" in the Bible, the Jews were so often living in slavery or close to it. (Egypt, the Romans, etc)

And people nowadays who feel like they will have no vindication in this life grasp very readily at the idea of heavenly justice, but they put their own desire for seeing others suffer onto it and look to the Old Testament for an angry God who will smite their enemies.

[elshiva]

9. There is more to the Old Testament than a wrathful god

I wish people would stop using this god puppet to justify their hatreds. It is a false god when you hear about hating on gays and women who have abortions. Fristianity vs. Christianity

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. Really!!!

The Jewish prophets were very socially conscious, with lots about not oppressing the poor and having a just society. These were guys who went and told off absolute monarchs to their faces.

I keep seeing religiously uneducated people talking about "the Old Testament God" as a God of wrath, and it's obvious that they've never read the Old Testament.

[RevCheesehead]

13. It's a cliche for the uninformed.

In fact, even the terminology "Old Testament" implies that the "New" version is somehow better, and supercedes that which came before (rather than properly understood as an extension of the former). That's why many Biblical scholars are now referring to it as "The Hebrew Bible."

[elshiva]

14. Read Hosea, first three chapters...

God as husband to Israel.

You are so right about the social consciousness, too. Amos for example.

[regnaD kciN]

10. Also, keep in mind...

...that when Jesus was warning about what get translated as "Hell" in those passages, what he was actually speaking of was "Gehenna" -- the Jerusalem dump, built on the site of a former pagan sacrificial altar.

Being "thrown on the garbage heap" doesn't have the same imagery as being confined to some perpetual underground torture-chamber. "Hell," as we think of it, is actually a late import from Norse paganism (which did have such a place for everlasting punishment), adopted for popular religious consumption when Christianity spread to those regions.

[GOPBasher]

11. That's interesting. I didn't realize that. :-) n/t

[supernova]

16. Thanks for the reminder

:thumbsup:

I found this out several years ago on Beliefnet by conversing with others on their progressive xtianity board.

I too have never believed in hell they way it's described in popular xtian culture. It just didn't work for me in any practical way. What? Like I'm going to love God for fear of eternal punishment? Boy, what a way to build a relationship. :eyes: In any other context, that kind of relationship would be labled abusive. And no, I don't believe God is abusive. Quite the opposite. :loveya: And now that I realize that it was never there in the original writings to begin with, I find it more of a comfort.

[JVS]

15. The value of God's forgiveness is diminished by us...

when we uphold the idea that we deserve anything other than damnation. If Jesus is saying something scary to us then it is not our place to dismiss it. In the end God is the one who judges us, not the other way around.

[supernova]

17. You think you deserve to be damned?

:shrug:

[JVS]

18. Yes

[supernova]

19. If that gives you comfort,

more power to you.

I feel a need for something different though.

[JVS]

20. It doesn't, but it still doesn't change the fact that I deserve it

[supernova]

21. Why do you think you deserve it?

Just curious.